Accenture to Help FirstEnergy Deploy Smart Meters for Two Million
Customers in Pennsylvania

April 02, 2014 08:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time

AKRON, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Accenture (NYSE:ACN) has been selected by FirstEnergy (NYSE:FE), a
leading U.S. diversified energy company, to manage the roll-out of
approximately two million smart meters to its customers across its four
Pennsylvania-based utilities, including Met-Ed, Penelec, Penn Power and
West Penn Power.

This represents one of the largest new Advanced Metering Infrastructure
(AMI) deployments in North America and the contract signing follows
approval from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.

FirstEnergy will install more than two million smart meters over the
next several years, meeting all the functional and business requirements
outlined in Act 129 passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in 2008.

Under a multi-year contract, Accenture Smart Grid Services will advise
FirstEnergy on managing its AMI program by providing services in areas
such as program management, business process design, change impact and
communications, vendor management, solution architecture, testing and
smart metering network operations.

The new AMI platform will deliver significant operational efficiencies,
support new and existing customer services programs, and enable
FirstEnergy to gain actionable business insights through better
visibility into real-time data.

“Smart meters will ultimately create a two-way communication between us
and our customers that will help us better understand their energy
needs, improve our service, and balance supply and demand more
efficiently,” said John Dargie from FirstEnergy. “After a rigorous
selection process, we chose Accenture due to its extensive experience in
smart metering deployments and we look forward to leveraging this
experience to help us de-risk the implementation and allow us to meet
our timeline.”

“We are excited to be working with FirstEnergy, one of the country’s
largest utilities, on this important and transformational project”, said
Jack Azagury, global managing director for Accenture Smart Grid
Services. “Smart metering provides a critical and foundational
capability as utilities undertake the journey towards a smarter, more
resilient digital grid. Our research has shown that utilities are
successfully leveraging the data from smart metering solutions through
advanced analytics to drive innovative customer propositions, improved
reliability, and reduced cost of operations.”

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company, with approximately 289,000 people serving clients
in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience,
comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions,
and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies,
Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance
businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of
US$28.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2013. Its home page
is www.accenture.com.

About FirstEnergy

FirstEnergy is a diversified energy company dedicated to safety,
reliability and operational excellence. Its 10 electric distribution
companies form one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric
systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West
Virginia, Maryland and New York. Its generation subsidiaries currently
control nearly 18,000 megawatts of capacity from a diversified mix of
scrubbed coal, non-emitting nuclear, natural gas, hydro and other
renewables.